My thoughts on “Babai”, the latest digital single from Daremo Shiranai.

Release Date: June 26th 2021

Tracklist

1. Babai

With the current crop of newer groups who have been debuting over the past year or so, in very trying times might I add, you guys might have noticed that while the overall quality of the music I’m writing about is incredibly high there hasn’t really been a group that has blown me away in a while. Personally it kinda sucks I won’t lie, but looking at the bigger picture I can at least appreciate the fact that most of the groups active right now are putting out very solid material that seems to be striking a chord with many of my acquaintances.

Daremo Shiranai are a group who have been putting out some high quality Rock songs ever since their debut at the start of the year. I’ve covered them several times on the site already and have enjoyed pretty much everything that I’ve heard from them to various degrees. I haven’t had my socks blown off by any song in particular but putting on one of their digital singles or their recent mini-album is never a bad time either.

Now that I’ve suitably put everyone reading this intro off of continuing any further, let’s talk about “Babai” which is the most recent digital offering from Daremo. They’ve tried their hand at all manner of Rock related genres on their previous outings so maybe we’ll find another one here too. I’m not really sure where else they can go at this point but given past form the resulting track is probably going to be pretty solid and true to whatever genre it is that they’re drawing inspiration from this time. Who knows though, let’s hit play and see what we have here shall we?

Upbeat Synth Pop with lots of tasty piano melodies wasn’t where I expected to end up on this one but hey here we are and I’m definitely not going to be complaining too much about it either. Pretty easy to hear right from the outset that this track was going in a bit of a different direction to the usual Daremo fare and I welcome the energetic synthesizers and tricky little piano parts that weave together to form the main crux of the track’s instrumental. The vocals offer some lower, steadying tones to stop the instrumental from getting too carried away with itself, while also being nice and melodic to fit right in with the overall vibe that we have going on here. Choruses follow a similar idea but crank up the brightness and tempo to give the track a shot in the arm.

The middle of the track does get a little bit too busy for me personally but I never did care much for that wall of noise style of synthesizer ambience and the Rap thing that they’ve sort of got going on with the vocals while it works well enough really does just add to the conflicting harshness of it all. As their own separate things I think every aspect of this track is done rather well but at least for me personally I’m not sure that works as well when it’s all brought together as a complete song. It’s almost like two competing ideas is I guess is how I would describe it, but maybe I’m just missing the point here entirely and there’s a really cool reason for what they’ve done that I just haven’t caught onto yet.

Well I got the more adventurous risk taking that I kinda hoped we’d see from Daremo after a couple of releases where they put out some pretty strong if not very unique takes on various Rock genres. “Babai” definitely takes things in a very different direction and that actually helps the track to stand out in the group’s discography as it very clearly has its own, rather vivid personality. I didn’t quite get it as a complete product but I still had a decently enjoyable time listening to it and I think others might be able to appreciate it a bit more than I did even.

That said, I still hope that Daremo continue to push in this and many other directions creatively as it’s cool that they can fall back on being able to put out a really capable Rock song, but it doesn’t really get the imagination going as much a track like this and I think the members are allowed to show a bit more personality as well when not trying to follow a fairly rigid template like several tracks we’ve seen in the past. On the whole, a positive development for the group and I look forward to seeing where things take us on future releases.